Katia Gordeeva remarried??

marininswife

Member
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Since someone mentioned "Sergey widows," I didn't know that term was a thing and I don't know what socials y'all are hanging out on, but I followed Gordeeva pretty closely at one point in the mid 2000s in the "GG corner" (a fan site established by a German fan), and I don't think any of the people there was saying Sergey was a saint (and what a disrespectful way to refer to him now). This is my first time hearing about any of these relationships, too, by the way. I only knew she started a relationship with Ilia a few years after Sergey died and got married when she got pregnant. (I came across this thread because I thought I'd check her IG after watching the Chinese pair skate and noticed that she and David Pelletier seemed to be together).

Sur, in hindsight, we GG fans probably cared a tad more than we should have about her relationship with Ilia, but it had nothing to do with thinking Sergey had been perfect in his life but rather with the fact that most G&G fans did not like Ilia himself. And to be honest, he's never been everybody's cup of tea, before, during, or after Katia. When she was with him, she never mentioned Sergey. It's like she had completely turned her back on that part of her life, when in fact he was not just her ex but also the father of her daughter. Ever since she divorced Ilia, she seems to regularly remember him on birthdays and such. Her first marriage is no longer taboo in public, which I'm sure is a lot healthier for Daria.

No one expected her to bury herself with him or stay single for the rest of her life (though admittedly some fans do romanticize their relationship--not Sergey himself but their relationship). I'm sure their marriage had their ups and downs like any other marriage and she's open about it in her book. They just got to also express their love and devotion as a couple in an artistic way that most couples don't and that makes it easier to romanticize their relationship. But that's not the point. Even exes and former husbands who have cheated on their wives do not get the radio silence treatment Sergey got from Katia in public after Katia moved with Ilia, and that was very odd for the GG fans who had loved them so much. Plus, who really thinks Ilia was in any shape or form at his age capable of being a father figure to Daria? He seemed too young to even be his own daughter's father (though to his credit by all public accounts he and Liza seem to have a very good relationship).

Anyways, Katia's personal life is her business. I don't care who she is in relationships with or marries. We cared about her and Sergey because they were a public couple and their married and artistic/athletic lives were fused.

In the end, it's just still too damn sad to think about Sergey's death. He wasn't just a "hunk. " By all accounts he was thoughtful, intelligent, and well-read (I read a favorite book of his once, The White Guard, and I thought it was excellent). He also had a very generous soul which made him easy to get along with. If he didn't speak English as much as Katia (who started speaking English early but plateaued a long time ago and still speaks broken English after all these years), it was because he hated making mistakes. Some language learners have a long "silence period" before they start speaking a language, but when they start speaking it, they speak it very well. I'm sure Sergey understood it better than he could speak it when he died and had he lived he would have spoken it much better than Katia. It's sad for any life to end at that age especially when he has such a small child. A wife can get over a husband's death (even one who was as much in love as Katia), but it's a lot more difficult for a small child to get over losing a beloved parental figure at that age. Yes, plenty do and turn out alright, but plenty others do not. Every person's circumstances are different. But I hope Daria stays away from social media, for her own sake, and finds peace and purpose in her life and finds joy in the memory of her.

G&G were a very special pair. For my taste, no one was or will ever be as beautiful as they were. They were artists first and foremost. I'm glad they skated when they did because they would have not done well with this new boring system (I stopped watching figure skating a long time ago because it just got so ugly). Rest in peace Sergey, and live and prosper, Daria.

I really don't have any thoughts on Katia and David, other than that I liked the routine they did in the show dedicated to Sergey's memory in Lake Placid (which is the only time I've seen them skate).
 

canbelto

Well-Known Member
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8,531
Since someone mentioned "Sergey widows," I didn't know that term was a thing and I don't know what socials y'all are hanging out on, but I followed Gordeeva pretty closely at one point in the mid 2000s in the "GG corner" (a fan site established by a German fan), and I don't think any of the people there was saying Sergey was a saint (and what a disrespectful way to refer to him now). This is my first time hearing about any of these relationships, too, by the way. I only knew she started a relationship with Ilia a few years after Sergey died and got married when she got pregnant. (I came across this thread because I thought I'd check her IG after watching the Chinese pair skate and noticed that she and David Pelletier seemed to be together).

Sur, in hindsight, we GG fans probably cared a tad more than we should have about her relationship with Ilia, but it had nothing to do with thinking Sergey had been perfect in his life but rather with the fact that most G&G fans did not like Ilia himself. And to be honest, he's never been everybody's cup of tea, before, during, or after Katia. When she was with him, she never mentioned Sergey. It's like she had completely turned her back on that part of her life, when in fact he was not just her ex but also the father of her daughter. Ever since she divorced Ilia, she seems to regularly remember him on birthdays and such. Her first marriage is no longer taboo in public, which I'm sure is a lot healthier for Daria.

No one expected her to bury herself with him or stay single for the rest of her life (though admittedly some fans do romanticize their relationship--not Sergey himself but their relationship). I'm sure their marriage had their ups and downs like any other marriage and she's open about it in her book. They just got to also express their love and devotion as a couple in an artistic way that most couples don't and that makes it easier to romanticize their relationship. But that's not the point. Even exes and former husbands who have cheated on their wives do not get the radio silence treatment Sergey got from Katia in public after Katia moved with Ilia, and that was very odd for the GG fans who had loved them so much. Plus, who really thinks Ilia was in any shape or form at his age capable of being a father figure to Daria? He seemed too young to even be his own daughter's father (though to his credit by all public accounts he and Liza seem to have a very good relationship).

Anyways, Katia's personal life is her business. I don't care who she is in relationships with or marries. We cared about her and Sergey because they were a public couple and their married and artistic/athletic lives were fused.

In the end, it's just still too damn sad to think about Sergey's death. He wasn't just a "hunk. " By all accounts he was thoughtful, intelligent, and well-read (I read a favorite book of his once, The White Guard, and I thought it was excellent). He also had a very generous soul which made him easy to get along with. If he didn't speak English as much as Katia (who started speaking English early but plateaued a long time ago and still speaks broken English after all these years), it was because he hated making mistakes. Some language learners have a long "silence period" before they start speaking a language, but when they start speaking it, they speak it very well. I'm sure Sergey understood it better than he could speak it when he died and had he lived he would have spoken it much better than Katia. It's sad for any life to end at that age especially when he has such a small child. A wife can get over a husband's death (even one who was as much in love as Katia), but it's a lot more difficult for a small child to get over losing a beloved parental figure at that age. Yes, plenty do and turn out alright, but plenty others do not. Every person's circumstances are different. But I hope Daria stays away from social media, for her own sake, and finds peace and purpose in her life and finds joy in the memory of her.

G&G were a very special pair. For my taste, no one was or will ever be as beautiful as they were. They were artists first and foremost. I'm glad they skated when they did because they would have not done well with this new boring system (I stopped watching figure skating a long time ago because it just got so ugly). Rest in peace Sergey, and live and prosper, Daria.

I really don't have any thoughts on Katia and David, other than that I liked the routine they did in the show dedicated to Sergey's memory in Lake Placid (which is the only time I've seen them skate).

Omg. Lol.
 

Muffin

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Messages
482
But that's not the point. Even exes and former husbands who have cheated on their wives do not get the radio silence treatment Sergey got from Katia in public after Katia moved with Ilia,
I used to visit GG Corner from time to time and I never heard of this "Sergei's Widows" stuff either. But I do remember a TON of unjustified anger at Katia when she got together with Ilia. And later on, unjustified judgment of Daria for growing up to be a normal young woman and no longer being an angelic baby.

Katia has never been "radio silent" about Sergei. She has always appropriately memorialized him, and still does. Some fans wanted her to continue doing weepy, soft-focus Hallmark specials about him year after year after year and that's not healthy or realistic.
If he didn't speak English as much as Katia (who started speaking English early but plateaued a long time ago and still speaks broken English after all these years)
I did notice that after almost 3 decades living in the US, Katie still consistently confuses the words "these" and "this". She did it on an instagram post the other day. The last time I heard her speak, she spoke quickly and wasn't struggling to find words, but the same old basic grammar errors that she's never fixed made it sound like her English is worse than it probably is.
 

Fadeevfanboy

Well-Known Member
Messages
308
This is honestly one pairing I never saw coming. They seem nothing alike. But they do really seem in love. I wish them the best.
David has probably changed a lot since his competing days and hopefully is less of the arrogant, hothead he was back then, both during and before Jamie.
 

Fadeevfanboy

Well-Known Member
Messages
308
I think he definitely is. He seemed charming, relaxed and happy in the Peacock documentary about 2002, and seemed to have excellent perspective on the relative importance of all of that business.
That is great to hear! Good for him. I hope he treats beautiful Katia like the princess she is.
 

Amy L

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Messages
9,581
I was a regular on GG Corner back in the day and the Sergei widows were definitely active there but didn't call themselves that on that board. I got into so many fights with the ringleader, a lady named Donna who was the fu**in worst and is still my least favorite person I've ever dealt with on the internet.

To say that they didn't want Katia to stay a widow forever is wrooooooonnng. I have so many obnoxious quotes still stuck in my head after all this time, but one of them was that she should happily live in the glow of his love forever.

As for the person who posted a very long and bizarre first post (lol) you gave me some vivid flashbacks and I do not thank you for it.
 

canbelto

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8,531
I was a regular on GG Corner back in the day and the Sergei widows were definitely active there but didn't call themselves that on that board. I got into so many fights with the ringleader, a lady named Donna who was the fu**in worst and is still my least favorite person I've ever dealt with on the internet.

To say that they didn't want Katia to stay a widow forever is wrooooooonnng. I have so many obnoxious quotes still stuck in my head after all this time, but one of them was that she should happily live in the glow of his love forever.

As for the person who posted a very long and bizarre first post (lol) you gave me some vivid flashbacks and I do not thank you for it.

Omg Donna! I remember Donna. Her father died in a sudden heart attack (like Sergei) and she said she never "moved on" from it so why should Katia?
I also remember people saying they needed to call Child Protective Services to snatch Daria away from Katia. It was wild.
 

Yogadgaf

Member
Messages
22
I don't get the connection between " watching the Chinese skate" and "Katia and David seemed to be together". Can someone enighten me?
Referring to Marininswife's long post....
 
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Yogadgaf

Member
Messages
22
Also.....Katia and David did a routine in Lake Placid in Sergei's memory? What? Are you thinking of Scott? Way back in the late 90's? David would have been in 12th grade...I'm confused.
 

marininswife

Member
Messages
14
Omg Donna! I remember Donna. Her father died in a sudden heart attack (like Sergei) and she said she never "moved on" from it so why should Katia?
I also remember people saying they needed to call Child Protective Services to snatch Daria away from Katia. It was wild.
Y'all clearly had a different experience with that website than I did. I guess I was not that involved either with my time or emotions. I defer to you on the opinion of that website since you are clearly more familiar with it than I am. May be that's why I had never heard of this Donna or any of the rumors about Katia's personal life that are being circulated in this forum.
 
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marininswife

Member
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14
I don't get the connection between " watching the Chinese skate" and "Katia and David seemed to be together". Can someone enighten me?
Referring to Marininswife's long post....
The only connection is that I stumbled on this forum after watching the Chinese pair skate (it made me think of Gordeeva and Grinkov, so I checked Katia's instagram and noticed pictures of her and David). The point was that I don't usually frequent this website and evidently my post was too long for this forum. I'm clearly in the wrong place.
 
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marininswife

Member
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14
Also.....Katia and David did a routine in Lake Placid in Sergei's memory? What? Are you thinking of Scott? Way back in the late 90's? David would have been in 12th grade...I'm confused.
Byron Allen, a producer of SOI, refers to that show in the first paragraph of this article: https://olympics.nbcsports.com/2020/11/20/sergei-grinkov-death-ekaterina-gordeeva/

The clip of Katia and David's routine used to be on YouTube. They were very good. P.S.--I see another commenter has shared the clip.
 
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marininswife

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14
I used to visit GG Corner from time to time and I never heard of this "Sergei's Widows" stuff either. But I do remember a TON of unjustified anger at Katia when she got together with Ilia. And later on, unjustified judgment of Daria for growing up to be a normal young woman and no longer being an angelic baby.

Katia has never been "radio silent" about Sergei. She has always appropriately memorialized him, and still does. Some fans wanted her to continue doing weepy, soft-focus Hallmark specials about him year after year after year and that's not healthy or realistic.

I did notice that after almost 3 decades living in the US, Katie still consistently confuses the words "these" and "this". She did it on an instagram post the other day. The last time I heard her speak, she spoke quickly and wasn't struggling to find words, but the same old basic grammar errors that she's never fixed made it sound like her English is worse than it probably is.
I concede that "radio silence" might be exaggerated, but don't you think she has seemed a lot more comfortable remembering Sergey than she was during her marriage to Ilia? May be it's just me, or may be it's just that she didn't have Instagram back then and other social media where she could post regular mentions of him on his birthdays...
 

becca

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21,619
The video of her and David skating together looked fabulous!

As for them ending up together it’s not that far fetched considering the smallness of the skating community.

Sergeis widows loook cray cray.

Who is anyone to say ilias wasn’t a good stepfather not a good match back then. Waaaayyy to much judgment.

If I were Sergei I would want my spouse to live life.
 

Bouffantrex

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Reading this thread has been a wild journey. However, I'm happy for Katia. Maybe opposites really do attract?
 

Amy L

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Y'all clearly had a different experience with that website than I did. I guess I was not that involved either with my time or emotions.

I was in high school when GG Corner started. The Internet was much smaller and let's just say I was a very dramatic teenager. I had a lot of emotions wrapped up in that crazy place lol

The point was that I don't usually frequent this website and evidently my post was too long for this forum. I'm clearly in the wrong place.

It wasn't the length necessarily, it's that plus being super judgey for a first post can be a red flag. For example, insinuating that Katia still speaks "broken English" and that Sergei "had he lived he would have spoken it much better than Katia" is a classic Sergei Widow tactic, that's why people lashed out. Denigrating Katia by comparing her to Sergei's near-perfect memory and wildly speculating on something that could literally never happen anyways is a ... whole .. thing. Katia's interview with TSL was quite good, and her English is completely decent. Official media interviews seem to make her nervous still, but in more relaxed settings it's obvious that's she's fluent.

I concede that "radio silence" might be exaggerated, but don't you think she has seemed a lot more comfortable remembering Sergey than she was during her marriage to Ilia? May be it's just me, or may be it's just that she didn't have Instagram back then and other social media where she could post regular mentions of him on his birthdays...
It could be that she was married to a live human and constantly bringing up a deceased former husband all of the time could do weird stuff to a relationship? Now she and David are both on their third marriages, they are probably a lot more chill about things. And you're right, she didn't have social media at the time which makes birthday mentions and whatnot much easier now. What was she supposed to do in the early 00s, release a press statement?
 
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marininswife

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I was in high school when GG Corner started. The Internet was much smaller and let's just say I was a very dramatic teenager. I had a lot of emotions wrapped up in that crazy place lol



It wasn't the length necessarily, it's that plus being super judgey for a first post can be a red flag. For example, insinuating that Katia still speaks "broken English" and that Sergei "had he lived he would have spoken it much better than Katia" is a classic Sergei Widow tactic, that's why people lashed out. Denigrating Katia by comparing her to Sergei's near-perfect memory and wildly speculating on something that could literally never happen anyways is a ... whole .. thing. Katia's interview with TSL was quite good, and her English is completely decent. Official media interviews seem to make her nervous still, but in more relaxed settings it's obvious that's she's fluent.


It could be that she was married to a live human and constantly bringing up a deceased former husband all of the time could do weird stuff to a relationship? Now she and David are both on their third marriages, they are probably a lot more chill about things. And you're right, she didn't have social media at the time which makes birthday mentions and whatnot much easier now. What was she supposed to do in the early 00s, release a press statement?
I was reacting to the poster who said Sergey was "a dope" because he didn't speak English and Katia did. I believe they said Katia was "the head" of the relationship, which meant that she was the smart one and Sergey was just a dense hunk. I teach English as a second language, and it is a fact that some speakers start speaking a second language fast but then plateau and don't improve and other speakers go through a long silence period but then speak it better than those who started speaking it earlier. So it's just possible that he could have spoken it better had he had a chance to continue to learn (and technically speaking Katia still makes grammatical mistakes). But it doesn't have anything to do with thinking that Sergey was better or smarter than Katia if that's what the term "Sergey's widow" implies. I do agree that the ability to speak another language is not an indicator of intelligence -- although that poster clearly implied that it did (which I find misinformed and disrespectful). Katia and Sergey were clearly devoted to each other and it's out of place for anyone to suggest that either one of them was too good for the other.

I think it may also be easy to misread a post and project other experiences on it if one does not know the person. But oh well, no big deal.
 
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marininswife

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David looked so thrilled to skate with Katia. I'm sure she is a dream partner for many pairs skaters. I'm glad she found happiness with him.
Pair skating is clearly where she shines with any partner, but I thought she looked particularly good with David. She and Sergey were the one and a half type of pair (big man, small woman), whereas she and David are more like the Protopovs (where the man and the woman are closer in stature. In general I prefer the later type because it is more harmonious and because in my opinion the big guy/small woman combo is macho -- but I make an exception for Gordeeva and Grinkov (and yes I do give Sergey a lot of credit for that because as a big guy he didn't dominate Katia as most guys in those pairs do but used his size to make her shine. I think he was described in an article as the stem to her flower and that pretty much hits the nail on the head). But anyway, I thought Katia and David looked very good together, too, in a different way. (And I did I liked him with Katia better than with Jamie).
 
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moebius

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I did notice that after almost 3 decades living in the US, Katie still consistently confuses the words "these" and "this". She did it on an instagram post the other day. The last time I heard her speak, she spoke quickly and wasn't struggling to find words, but the same old basic grammar errors that she's never fixed made it sound like her English is worse than it probably is.
My parents lived in the US for more than 50 years and still speaks broken English. For many people, if you immigrate to the US after after the teens, most likely their English won't be perfect.
 

Ananas Astra

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Don't get me started about native speakers who still manage to confuse "this" and "these" and the classic "their"/"they're"/"there".

Katia is forgiven, because to distinguish between a short and long "i"-sound in a language like English, is naturally hard for Russians because a short "i" doesn't really exist and turns into an "bl"-sound in pronunciation.
That would be my explanation.
 
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Yogadgaf

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The dividing line between having an "accent" when speaking English, or not having an accent, is.......puberty!
I just learned that really interesting fact recently. Two siblings who came from..let's say Australia..to New York when one was 16 and the other 10.....the older one while speaking perfect English will always have a slight Aussie undertone his whole life. Now a non English language speaker at a later age, like Katia, that's way more difficult and complex.
I heard one of the very young Russian hockey players who was being coached by David (he is a skating coach for the Edmonton Oilers) saying a couple of years ago that he was a really, really cool guy and that they spoke a bit of Russian together (yes, he and David!) because "he has a Russian girlfriend, y'know". Then this young hockey kid winked and put his tongue in his cheek. It was a hilarious little snippet. I can't remember where I saw it. It was about 3 yrs ago max. I already knew he and Katia had posted pictures on social media, travelling in Europe, Montreal, Quebec etc so I figured it was serious, as David's family lives just east of Quebec City. It looks like they may have spent Christmas there this year, from looking at Katia Instagram.
 

canbelto

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I was in high school when GG Corner started. The Internet was much smaller and let's just say I was a very dramatic teenager. I had a lot of emotions wrapped up in that crazy place lol

I remember the days where nearly every thread degenerated into discussions about whether Katia was a "good Christian" or not. Ah, those were the days.
 

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